Harvesting the Heart (33 page)

"Paige!"
Mary, the receptionist who had replaced me, stood up the minute I
walked in the door. "Let me give you a hand." She came up
to me and lifted Max's carrier off my arm, poking her finger into his
puffy red cheek. "He's adorable," she said, and I smiled.

Three
of the nurses, hearing my name, swelled into the waiting room.
They embraced me and wrapped me in the heady smell of their perfume
and the brilliance of their clean white outfits. "You look
fabulous," one said, and I wondered if she didn't see my
tangled, hanging hair; my mismatched socks; the pasty wax of my skin.

Mary
was the one to shoo them back behind the swinging wooden door.
"Ladies," she said, "we've got an office to run here."
She carried Max to an empty chair, surrounded by several very
pregnant women. "Dr. Thayer's running late," she said to
me. "So what's new?"

Mary
ran back to the black lacquer desk to answer the phone, and I watched
her go. I wanted to push her out of the way, to open the top drawer
and riffle through the paper clips and the payment invoices, to
hear my own steady voice say "Cambridge
ob/gyn
."
Before Max was even born, Nicholas and I had decided I'd stay home
with him. Art school was out of the question, since we couldn't
afford both day care and tuition. And as for me working, well, the
cost of decent day care almost equaled my combined salaries at Mercy
and the doctors' office, so it just didn't pay.
You
don't want a stranger taking care of him, do you?
Nicholas
had said. And I suppose I had to agree.
One
year,
Nicholas
told me, smiling.
Let's
give it one year, and then we'll see.

And
I had beamed back at him, running my palms over my still-swollen
belly. One year. How bad could one single year be?

I
leaned over and unzipped Max's sweater, opened the first few buttons
of the jacket underneath. He was sweating. I would have taken them
both off, but that would have awakened him for sure, and I wasn't
ready for that. One of the pregnant women caught my eye and smiled.
She had healthy, thick brown hair that fell in little cascades
to her shoulders. She was wearing a sleeveless linen maternity dress
and espadrilles. She looked down at Max and unconsciously rubbed her
hands over her belly.

When
I turned to look, most of the other women in the office were watching
my baby sleep. They all had the same expression on their faces—kind
of dreamy, with a softness in their eyes that I never remembered
seeing in mine. "How old is he?" the first woman asked.

"Six
weeks," I said, swallowing a lump in my throat. All the others
turned at the sound of my voice. They were waiting for me to tell
them something—anything—a story that would let them know
it was worth the wait; that labor wouldn't be so horrible; that I had
never been happier in my life. "It's not what you think," I
heard myself saying, my words pouring thick and slow. "I haven't
slept since he was born. I'm always tired. I don't know what to do
with him."

"But
he's so precious," another woman said.

I
stared at her, her belly, her baby inside. "Consider yourself
lucky," I said.

Mary
called my name minutes later. I was set up in a small white
examination room with a poster of a womb on the wall. I undressed and
wrapped the paper robe around myself and opened the drawer to the
little oak table. Inside was the tape measure and the Doppler
stethoscope. I touched them and peeked at Max, still sleeping. I
could remember lying on the examination table during my checkups,
listening to the baby's amplified heartbeat and wondering what
he would look like.

Dr.
Thayer came into the room in a burst of rustling paper.

"Paige!"
she said, as if she was surprised to see me there. "How are you
feeling?"

She
motioned me to a stool, where I could sit and talk to her before
getting up on the table and into the humiliating position of an
internal exam. "I'm all right," I said.

Dr.
Thayer flipped open my file and scribbled some notes. "No pain?
No trouble with nursing?"

"No,"
I told her. "No trouble at all."

She
turned to Max, who slept in his carrier on the floor as though he
were always an angel. "He's wonderful," she said, smiling
up at me.

I
stared at my son. "Yes," I said, feeling that choke again
at the back of my throat. "He is." Then I put my head in my
hands and started to cry.

I
sobbed until I couldn't catch my breath, and I thought for sure I
would wake up Max, but when I lifted my head he was still sleeping
peacefully on the floor. "You must think I'm crazy," I
whispered.

Dr.
Thayer put her hand on my arm. "I think you're like every other
new mother. What you're feeling is perfectly normal. Your body has
just been through a very traumatic experience, and it needs time to
heal, and your mind needs to get adjusted to the fact that your life
is going to change."

I
reached across her for a tissue. "I'm awful with him. I don't
know how to be a mother."

Dr.
Thayer glanced at the baby. "Looks like you're doing fine to
me," she said, "although you might not have needed the
sweatshirt
and
the
sweater."

I
winced, knowing that I had done something wrong again and hating
myself for it. "How long does it take?" I asked, a thousand
questions at once. How long before I know what I'm doing? How long
before I feel like myself again? How long before I can look at him
with love instead of fear?

Dr.
Thayer helped me over to the examination table. "It will take,"
she said, "the rest of your life."

I
still had silver lines on my cheeks when Dr. Thayer left, memories
I couldn't wash away of acting like a fool in front of her. I walked
out of the office without saying goodbye to the waiting pregnant
women or to Mary, who called after me even as the door was closing. I
lugged Max to the parking lot, his carrier becoming heavier with each
step. The diaper bag cut into my shoulder, and I had a pain in my
back from leaning heavily to one side. Max still slept, a miracle,
and I found myself praying to the Blessed Mother, figuring she of all
holy saints would understand. Just one more half hour, I silently
begged, and then we'll be home. Just one more half hour and he can
wake up and I'll feed him and we'll go back to our normal routine.

The
parking attendant in the lot was a teenager with skin as black as
pitch and teeth that gleamed in the sun. He carried a boom box on his
shoulder. I gave him my validated ticket, and he handed me my keys.
Very carefully, I opened the passenger door and secured the seat belt
around Max's carrier. I shut the door more quietly than I would have
imagined possible. Then I moved around to my side of the car.

At
the moment I opened the door, the attendant switched on his radio.
The hot pulse of rap music split the air as powerfully as a summer
storm, rocking the car and the clouds and the pavement. The boy
nodded his head and shuffled his feet, hip-hop dancing between the
orange parking lines. Max opened his eyes and shrieked louder than I
had ever heard him yell.

"Sssh,"
I said, patting his head, which was sweaty and red from the band of
the sweater's hood. "You've been such a good boy."

I
put the car in drive and started out of the lot, but that only made
Max cry louder. He'd slept so long I had no doubt he was starving,
but I didn't want to feed him here. If I could just get him home,
everything would be all right. I curved around the line of parked
cars and came to the driveway that led out to the street. Max,
purpled with effort, began to choke on his own sobs.

"Dear
God," I said, slamming the car into park and unfastening the
seat belt around Max's carrier. I pulled my shirt out of my slacks
and hoisted it up around my neck, fumbling with my bra to bare a
breast. Max stiffened as I lifted him and held his hot little body
against mine. The rough wool of his sweater chafed my skin; his
fingers clawed at my ribs. Now I began to cry, and tears splashed
onto the face of my son, running over his own tears and falling
somewhere between his sweater and sweatshirt. The parking
attendant swore at me and started to walk over to the car. I quickly
pulled my shirt down over Max's face, hoping that I wouldn't smother
him. I did not unroll the window. "You're blocking my driveway,"
the boy said, his lips twisted and angry against the hot glass.

The
rap music throbbed in my head. I turned away from the boy, and I
pulled Max tighter against me. "Please," I said, closing my
eyes. "Please leave me alone."

Dr.
Thayer had told me to do something for myself. So when Max went to
sleep at eight, I decided I'd take a long, hot bath. I found the baby
monitor the Fogertys had given us, and I set it up in the bathroom.
Nicholas wasn't due home until ten, and Max would probably sleep
until midnight. I was going to be ready when my husband came home.

Nicholas
and I had not made love since I was just five months pregnant, that
night when it had hurt and I told him to stop. We never spoke about
it—Nicholas didn't like to talk about things like that—and
as I got bigger and more uncomfortable, I cared less and less. But I
needed him now. I needed to know that my body was more than a
birthing machine, a source of food. I needed to hear that I was
beautiful. I needed to feel Nicholas's hands on me.

I
ran the bathwater, stopping it three times because I thought I had
heard Max making sounds. In the corner of the medicine cabinet I
found a lilac bath cube, and I watched it disintegrate in the water.
I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and shrugged my shorts off and
stood in front of the mirror.

My
body had become foreign. Strange—I was still expecting to see
the big curve of my stomach, the heavy lines of my thighs. But this
thinner body wasn't the way it used to be, either. I was mapped with
purple lines. My skin was the color of old parchment and seemed to be
stretched just as tight. My breasts were low and full, my belly soft
and bowed. I had become someone else.

I
told myself Nicholas would still like what he saw. After all, the
changes were because I had borne his child. Surely there was
something beautiful in that.

I
slipped into the steaming water and ran my hands up and down my arms,
over my feet and between my toes. I nodded off for a little while,
catching myself as my chin went underwater. Then I stood and toweled
dry and walked to the kitchen absolutely naked, leaving soft damp
footprints on the seamless carpet.

I
had set a bottle of wine to chill, and I took it from the
refrigerator and brought it into the bedroom with two thick blue
water glasses. Then I rummaged in my drawers for the white silk
sheath I had worn on our wedding night, the only piece of sexy
lingerie I had. I pulled it over my head, but it stuck at my
chest—I'd never considered that it might not fit. By
wriggling and tugging, I managed to get it over me, but it stretched
at the bust and the hips as if I'd been poured into it. My stomach
was highlighted, a soft white bowl.

I
heard Nicholas's car crunch into the driveway. Dizzy, I ran around
the bedroom, turning off the lights. I smiled to myself—it
would be like the first time all over again. Nicholas opened the
front door quietly and climbed the stairs, pausing for a moment at
our bedroom door. He pushed it open and stared at me where I sat on
the center of the bed. My knees were tucked underneath me, my hair
fell into my eyes. I wanted to say something to him, but my breath
caught. Even with his loosened tie, his five o'clock shadow, and his
hunched shoulders, Nicholas was the most striking man I had ever
seen.